Eco Sounding

Barking mad Greenwich council, south London, doesn't have a great tree-planting record, but recently it has been putting saplings in an area known as Harmony Wood. A Good Thing? No, says Nick Bertrand, a local. He is so incensed that the council has chosen to plant them on an old lowland hay meadow - one of Britain's most threatened habitats - that he has been uprooting them. Although his argument - not his action - is supported by international conservation group Plantlife, Greenwich council is not amused and is taking him to court, claiming £5,000 compensation.

Tidy Toad Meanwhile, the Phantom Conservation Volunteers are a direct action group set up to target what they believe are poorly-managed wildlife sites and beauty spots. The group, from Brighton, took its first direct action last week when, with locals, it descended on Toad's Hole Valley, a patch of downland outside the city that the Countryside Agency does not want included in the proposed South Downs national park. More than 30 people picked up litter and cut down trees and scrub.

Stumped by store Tesco, Britain's biggest food company, has incurred the wrath of some of the most notable environmentalists with its plan to fell 10 sycamore trees, including four 90-foot giants, in the centre of Shaftesbury, Dorset, where it intends to build a superstore. Sue Clifford, of Common Ground, and others in the Shaftesbury Tree Group despair. "The trees are important to the town," Clifford says. "They are part of a tree preservation order and Tesco could easily resite the store." Tesco (profits of more than £1bn last year) claims that the trees are diseased, but Clifford is still not happy. "All old trees are diseased, but that doesn't mean they are dangerous," she says, adding ominously that "there are some in the group who may feel obliged to chain themselves to the trees".

Supergran Septuagenarian grandmother Betty Krawczyk is well known to Eco Sounding readers after she was twice imprisoned for blockading logging trucks in old-growth Canadian public forests. She has now been given six more months inside, but remains cheerful. "Civil disobedience requires that individuals disregard their own personal comfort. It is contagious, which so frightens the companies and courts that they must pretend they hold no political prisoners," she writes. Attagirl!